


Wedding Roses

by babyiknow



Category: Dickinson (TV)
Genre: F/F, Hanahaki Disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 05:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21404938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyiknow/pseuds/babyiknow
Summary: “Excuse me.” Her royal blue dress brushes the ebony folds of Sue’s, and Emily’s moved on from volcanoes, from orange-red hot and burning lava, instead more interested in the sea, in the stormy blue-black waves crashing in her chest, bruising her heart the same color.
Relationships: Emily Dickinson/Susan "Sue" Gilbert
Comments: 12
Kudos: 176





	Wedding Roses

It’s a testament to her self-restraint that she doesn’t reach out and smack Austin’s hand away from where it brings Sue’s fingers to his chapped lips. Sue glances at Emily, her eyes cautionary and the slightest bit uncomfortable.   
“Austin, enough with the PDA, I’m right here,” She whines, ignoring the subtle catch in her throat. “You’ll have time to do… that, after the wedding.” Her voice breaks on the second syllable, and Sue’s eyes are centered on her now, pleading, amber-toned and shining. She cuts herself off before she can reveal herself any more than she already has.   
“Excuse me.” Her royal blue dress brushes the ebony folds of Sue’s, and Emily’s moved on from volcanoes, from orange-red hot and burning lava, instead more interested in the sea, in the stormy blue-black waves crashing in her chest, bruising her heart the same color. When she’s finally locked in her room, she’s tempted to fall into bed and give in to the crush of sleep, but as soon as her head hits the pillow, she’s surrounded, bombarded by Sue, by jasmine, lemongrass, and the unnameable spicy scent that lingers just around Sue’s collarbones, behind her ears, under her wrists. In the past, Emily would savor it like droplets of opium on her taste buds, until Austin ruined it.   
She knows, she knows- she’s not stupid, after all- that she can’t marry Sue, can’t justifiably keep spending nights with her head buried in Sue’s shoulder, can’t keep playing house like they’ll never grow up, she knows this.   
Emily smashes her face into the pillow, breathing in the tainted air through stuttering breath, and she sits up, coughing slightly. Laughing, a little, when a white rose petal floats down, looking toward the ceiling, where it must have fallen. She scrunches her eyebrows inward when she sees nothing but the flat white panels above her head.   
“Emily?” A voice sounds outside her door, and Emily quickly presses the petal in between the lightly lined pages of her journal.   
“Come in!” She calls, pulling a lock of hair over her shoulder. She smiles when Sue peers in, and shuts the door behind herself.   
“Are you alright, Emily? You look pale,” Sue settles on the soft mattress beside her, running her fingertips over Emily’s sleeve.   
“Yeah, um, yes. I’m just feeling a little under the weather, that’s all. Just need some rest.” She smiles halfheartedly at the other girl, shrugging.   
“Up late writing, no doubt. Inspiration-”   
“-never sleeps.” Emily finishes, and their smiles come a bit more easily this time.   
“Come here. We can nap for awhile.” Sue scoots farther up the bed, until her back hits the headboard. She reaches her pale arms towards Emily, and the taller girl relents, snuggling her face into Sue’s stomach, sighing when the brunette tangles her hands in Emily’s loose hair.   
When Emily wakes up, Sue is gone, and she blinks deliriously, dull noise pounding persistently at her ears, as if asking to be let in. When her mind catches up with her body, she remembers the party, and leaps up, a bit more refreshed than earlier.   
The party is quieter when Emily pads down the stairs. Her eyes immediately find Sue, the only black dress in the room, swaying silently alongside Austin, whose erratic dancing is enough of an eye catcher by itself.   
Her view is blocked by an amorous intruder, and Emily almost rolls her eyes at the idiotic grin on George’s face.   
“Care to dance?” His voice is low, suggestive, and she relents, offering her hand in resolve to sway with the bulky man until he grows bored of her.   
While George yanks her around the floor, she glances over at Sue, and her eyes widen at the sight of her and Austin nose to nose, leaning passionately into one another, and Emily coughs. And coughs, and coughs, until George pulls away and a few heads turn, and she breaks away from his gentle grip, disappearing up the stairs in a flurry of shimmering blue.   
She sinks down against the wooden bedframe, and finally dislodges the tickle in her throat. White daisy petals fall into her lap like snow, and she realizes it’s her, they're her petals, her game of “She Loves Me Not”.   
Her realization is interrupted by the subject of her game, rushing to kneel down beside her.   
“What’s wrong? I knew you took too much of that stuff!” Sue scolds, and Emily smiles weakly up at her. She’s read about this, in the red-spined, thick books in the library, she knows now that she’s sick, and she knows she won’t get better, knows that Sue and Austin will still get married, no matter how many petals she chokes up.   
“Nothing, love, nothing. I was just trying to escape George’s desperate marriage proposals!” She lies, giggling conspiratorially as if they’re in on a joke together. Sue’s eyes soften, and she leans down and presses her pillow-lips to Emily’s collarbone.   
Austin, once again, ruins everything, and barges in as graceful as ever. Emily should have known not to get her hopes up, to fall for her brother’s fiance, or a woman, no less.   
Sue’s gone the next morning.   
\- - -  
Emily writes, still. She pours her heart into Sue’s letters, crafting poetry mazes, doodling hearts, clouds, volcanoes, even, along the margins of her favorite, golden-edged stationery. There’s no reply, and Emily’s letters shorten, teardrops blurring the inked lines, and white-pink petals pressed in the envelope.   
She hasn’t left her bed in days, and she doesn’t know what’s worse, Sue at home, engaged to her brother, or Sue in Boston, free but silent, and Emily in bed, petals clogging her throat, scribbling words in desperate, white-fingertipped font.   
All she can do is write. Write and write and write, stopping occasionally to spit lilies, daisies, and roses off the side of the bed. Austin is surprisingly, well, helpful, instead of the normal nuisance he usually is. Emily guesses it’s because she’s dying, but it’s nice to have someone care for her, sometimes. Lavinia helps her wash, and Emily falls in love with the way hot water feels running over her scalp without having to move a muscle. She’s listening to the water rush around her ears when she overhears a conversation outside her washroom door.   
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Austin,” Lavinia’s soft voice is muffled through the wood, so Emily pushes herself up halfheartedly to wrap a towel weakly around her hair.   
“It’s not-” A deep sigh, “It’s not about me, Vin! It’s about Emily!” He stresses, and Emily can picture him running his hand through his ebony hair in frustration.   
“She- she’s dying. And I think Sue should get a chance to say goodbye before it’s too late. It’s not about the marriage.” And it’s Lavinia who sighs this time.   
“She left, Austin! She didn’t care enough to stay! Why does she deserve that chance?” Emily closes her eyes, leaning her head against the cold porcelain of the bathtub. She supposes, yes, it would probably be in her best interest to notify Sue of her impending departure.   
She wouldn’t mind Sue’s face being the last thing she sees.   
\- - -  
Emily barely remembers sending the letter, her brain too occupied with the implications of her once white petals now stained red, dripping metallic tang onto her white sheets.   
“Austin, Austin!” Lavinia’s screeching briefly clears her mind just long enough for her to mumble a faint, “Sue?” through bloody lips, before collapsing back down in a fit of coughing. Her vision goes black, and she slips into a long awaited, blissful sleep.   
\- - -  
“Emily,” A gasping, low voice cuts through the calm white noise of her slumber, and she blinks open her heavy eyelids.   
“Emily, I- I got your letter.” Sue comes into clarity slowly, piece by piece. Her eyes show up first, glistening wet amber and honey.   
“Is it true? You- you’re sick?” The rest comes all at once, pale skin, the familiar wrinkle above dark eyebrows, black lace gloves.   
“I’m dying, Sue.” She replies, plainly, because the vines in her chest twist too painfully to wax poetic anymore. Sue lets out a shocked, winded breath, and her shining eyes spill over, quivering in the yellow sunlight.   
“You can’t be sure, Emily, you can’t be dying, you’re too young, too bright- you- you’re-” Sue is getting louder, closer, bringing shaking hands to rest over Emily’s gaunt cheeks feather-soft, like she’s made of porcelain. Emily chuckles wryly, covering her mouth to cough red petals into her palm.   
“I can’t- I can’t lose you too, Emily, you’re the only person that really, truly loves me.” Sue’s breathless voice is overshadowed by another round of shuddering coughs, and red petals mix with white, fluttering down around her like a meadow.   
“Sue-” Emily praises, and suffocating, salty tears roll freely down her cheeks. She gathers petals in her hands, stained with blood, the filmy petals crumpling under her fingers. They litter her hair, her dress, her bedsheets, fragrant and sickly.   
“At my funeral, please-” She lifts Sue’s shaking head, “Roses. White roses, like- like a wedding. Like a celebration.” And suddenly her voice is stopped, her lungs filling with foreign air, and she can’t smell the revolting petals anymore, only the achingly familiar cross between sweet and spicy, jasmine and lemongrass, as pink pillow lips smash desperately against her own. Sue pulls back momentarily, leaning her wet cheek against Emily’s pale face.   
“It’s me, I’m- why didn’t you tell me, darling?” Her hands cradle Emily’s jaw.   
“You were marrying Austin, and you loved him,” Emily supplies. “At the party-”   
“At the party we were high on opium, Emily! You were sick, even then? Sick this whole time?” She strokes her nails through thick chestnut locks.   
“I just wanted you to be happy.” A tear slides down her skin, and Sue is quick to wipe it away.   
“I’m only happy, Emily, with you. Even with my sisters, or Austin, or anyone, it’s always been you who’s constantly in my head. Wherever I am, you are too, and I can’t help loving you, every day, more and more. I’m sorry I didn’t notice, and I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me. It’s always been you, Em. Forevermore.” She presses her lips again to Emily’s, gentler this time, and Emily hears a poem in her head, for the first time in a while.   
\- - -  
It takes a while for Emily’s lungs to heal from the thorns and vines, but it’s heaven compared to her days of sickly solitude. It also doesn’t hurt that Sue stays cuddled up with her on clean sheets almost 24/7, only leaving to change her clothes or bring Emily a fresh cup of tea.   
“I think I’m ready to write again.” She says, a couple weeks after, when Sue’s black dress ruffles around her legs, having woken up from an accidental cat-nap.   
“Oh, Emily, that’s wonderful, doll!” Sue leans over Emily, her loose hair brushing over the taller girl’s collarbone as she pulls the neglected leather-bound journal from the wooden nightstand. Emily hasn’t seen Sue this carefree since they were younger, but she relishes the way the shorter girls eyes brighten impossibly lighter each time their lips touch. She takes the journal from Sue’s outstretched hand, and their fingers brush. She begins slowly, scratching out a word to replace it with another, but once she finds her groove, her pen glides smoothly, quickly over the paper and she flips the page in order to continue her stream of thought.   
She glances over at Sue, pausing briefly, because the expression on her face is one so unique, Emily can’t fathom how to express it in prose, one of complete and utter unconditional love, of wonder, disbelief, and an unnameable softness incomparable to any human emotion.   
She ends her line with the words:   
Sue, forevermore.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Dickinson and immediately came up with this, so I hope you guys like it. If there's anyone interested, this "genre" seems kind of empty.


End file.
